


But Summer Does Not Come (to Jotunheim)

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: (you reap what you sow), Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Fashion & Couture, High Fantasy, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Politics, Snapshots, War & Peace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aim of it--all of it--was to bring peace between their kingdoms.  Instead, they got a sorcerer, a changeling, a creature born between worlds.</p>
<p>Peace, their voices chanted.</p>
<p>But war was in their blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Summer Does Not Come (to Jotunheim)

"If you had been born anything less than what you are," his father tells him when he is perhaps five or six decades old, "then this kingdom would have been but rot."

Loki does not yet understand those words, too cryptic and careful in ways he won't come into until he is about a century. At the same time, he is old enough not to forget them and to feel puzzled, perhaps even a little intrigued. The spark of this interest must show in his eyes for Laufey smiles, all sharp, bone-white teeth, and rewards him with a sugar treat that tastes faintly of summer berries. 

(But summer does not come to Jotunheim.)

 

"You were born," his father tells him, the eve of his centennial birthday, "to save this kingdom."

An Aesir servant, freshed-faced and bright, plaits golden threads into Loki's hair while the another, a little older but not less pleasing, places tiny emeralds at the corners of Loki's eyes and along the gold leaf that has been painstakenly pasted over his face in the designs of Yggdrasil's branches and spring buds of world-flowers. Loki cannot respond to his father's words, not while he maintains his stillness as third servant, older and more burnished than the rest, places crushed rubies over his lips. Instead, he watches Odin's pleasure as Loki's eyes shift unbidden between Aesir blue to emerald green, a kaleidoscope influenced by what he sees.

Like his ever-shifting eyes, he is pale-skinned and unscarred beneath the light of the shining halls. He has not yet mastered his fluidity of form, the mimickry of sight coming easier than even breathing. The feat leaves all who witness it breathless, and Loki knows, although he is young, that even among the Aesir such an ability much be rare, perhaps even rarer than it is in Jotunheim. Loki knows there is much he does not understand about his worlds (for they are his, if what his fathers say is true), but he knows that his form is unique, perhaps even precious.

He sits in the window of his new quarters for the next century, Odin at his side, jewel-decorated hands folded neatly over the splendid green and gold robes woven specially for him. It is his first sunrise, and, though he cannot form anything but the smooth, emotionless expression required to avoid disturbing the ceremonial jewels and gold framing his features, he gazes out as the sky shifts through a thousand gradients of colors, as splendid as the twisted lights that glow in the otherwise black sky of Jotunheim. Loki knows not what colors his eyes turn, but, in the dawn's light, clad in jewels and gold, he is his own star.

 

"This is Thor," his father tells Loki before turning to Thor and saying, "and this is Loki."

They are left in what Loki surmisses is Thor's quarters. Thor is five centuries, perhaps a little bit more, and he has the golden hair and bright blue eyes of the Aesir. Those eyes gaze curiously at Loki, who still wears the ceremonial jewels and gold leaf upon his face, although the heavy outer robe of golden fleece has been removed from his shoulders.

"Father says we will be married," Thor says, after the silence begins to stretch, "when you come of age."

"Yes," Loki answers, settling himself on the low bench that occupies the space beneath the greater window.

Thor's face scrunches, and he looks less than his nearly out-of-nursery years. "But you're a boy."

"It does not matter," Loki says, and he does not mean it be cruel, although he's begun to understand many take his knowledge as such.

But Thor doesn't start shouting or screaming as Loki has learned most children are wont to do when told their thoughts are wrong or inconsequential. Instead, his face screws up again like he has to think very hard about Loki's words in order to understand them. Perhaps Thor is handicapped in some way, Loki thinks, although even as the thought forms he doubts it. The get of a seer and the Allfather would not be so and allowed to live. The Aesir prized perfection even more than the Jotunn.

(The Aesir had the luxury to be picky.)

After a long moment, Thor's face smooths out, his eyes lighting again like twin lamps as his face splits in a broad smile. Loki blinks, feels one of the many, tiny emeralds around his eyes shift, the glue that holds it to his skin beginning to weaken. If it falls in the afternoon light, it will look like a shining, precious tear.

"I accept you then," Thor announces, bounding over in a few short steps to flop onto the free space on the low bench next to Loki. "It will be much more fun to have a husband than a wife!"

Loki gazes at Thor, baffled for the first time since arriving on Asgard. Many things on Asgard have fascinated him, of course, for it is all so different from the frozen, shadowed realm of Jotunheim, but nothing until Thor has left him feeling confused like he often does when the tutors attempt to coach him in impossibilities and what he cannot have. For everything in his realms must belong to him, must be his to take and know, because, if he cannot master all, then how is he to save his kingdoms? And once he recognizes the feeling, the spark of interest that has always been such a part of him stirs, and he feels his mouth, despite himself and the rubies that encrust his lips, twitch to return that over-broad smile with one of his smaller own.

"Yes," he says, a bit of a laugh on the back of his tongue, sweet and summery all on its own, "I suppose so."

 

The next morning, his father comes to him as the sun rises in the uncovered windows of Loki's new quarters. He does not require that Loki look away from the sun, lets Loki marvel at the sight, the one thing that is truly unique to Asgard. 

"A lovely pelt," Odin says, referring to the dark fur sleeping robe that Laufey gave Loki as an early first century gift. "It looks like one of the great wolves of Niflheim."

"Father claims it to be so," Loki answers, threading his fingertips over the soft, warm fur. "I do not think it was full grown. I imagine the fur would be coarser if it had been."

Odin hums, a deep, rumbling noise that sounds nearly identical to Laufey. Loki shivers slightly at the sound, not because he feels threatened (he's never had a reason to when Laufey makes such a noise), but because it's uncanny to hear it from one who does not have a Jotunn form. Odin blinks and gazes at Loki with his single eye, and Loki doesn't dare look away. A moment stretches long and taunt, a bow string without an arrow, but then Odin sighs, and the bow is relaxed again. 

"The libraries are yours to peruse, if you wish," his father tells him, "and you may wander the palace and the gardens. Laufey has said you often seek your own tutelage?"

"I take my lessons with my father," Loki responds, finally turning from the window to fully face Odin.

Odin's lips twitch upward, just the lips. It's a fascinating piece of movement that Loki can't help but stare at because, on a Jotunn, a smile always meant teeth bared; the sharp edges of jotunn teeth would cut the lips otherwise. The strange, blunt teeth of Asgardians make them look harmless, but Loki knows better.

"He also boasts of your skill in magic."

Loki lifts his lips, teeth Asgardian blunt, and says, demurely, "As he should."

 

In the centuries that follow, Loki gains names. The common folk call him such titles of _Prince_ and _Thor's bethrothed_ and _Half-Jotunn_. The court calls him these and other such things, sometimes whispering of his skills to create other names like _Silvertongue_ , _Laufeyson_ , and _Liesmith_. And from these names Loki learns best how to smile, how to hold himself, how to manipulate and move within what will be believed.

Thor scowls when he hears Loki's other names, twists his hand over the handle of his coming of age gift, Mjolnir. "When we are wed, they will no longer call you such things," he rumbles, the shift in the air before a storm.

"I do not mind," Loki murmurs, rotating his knives lazily in his hands.

Thor frowns deeper, his eyes tracking the circles the knives make. "That we be wed or that they call you names?"

"Neither," Loki admits easily, bending his knees, centering his stance.

They've sparred against each other so often over the past eight hundred years that there is little to learn of each other's bodies or combat styles anymore. Hunting or traveling or questing: there is little that one has done without the other. Sometimes Loki wonders if it should be odd that they bethrothed, that they are as close as brothers even if their blood is only halfway there. Other times, Loki knows that there is nothing better he could hope for, the child born as a tool for a peace no one truly wanted.

His being in its entirety--his mind, his body, his magic--is meant only to be used; that is why Odin sired him, that is why Laufey birthed him, that is why he lives. They can make their servants paint his lips and plait gold into his hair, can dress him in all the ornaments they desire, but Loki will not be fooled. He will not be blind like Thor, who believes himself a beloved son, a prince by right and not Odin's will alone. Loki knows this, knows that he is but a pawn in the game of kings and fate. 

"I will make them stop," Thor snarls, Mjolnir pushing against knives and magic, his eyes wide and blue and bright; "I will make them see you as I do."

But Loki also knows that while Thor always keeps his word, Loki makes everything a lie.

 

The air of Midgard is stale, dusty. It smells of steel and chemicals.

"I am here," Loki says, "for my husband."

The mortals are silent, stunned. Loki reaches up, smooths the pads of his fingers over the lapels of his suit. He smiles, gentle, like an invitation but for the gleam in his eyes.

"Perhaps his records have yet to reflect this. We were married," Loki murmurs, a caress of sound against tongue and lips, "only two days ago."

There's some shuffling, some awkwardness, muscled men in suits rather than proper armour ushering him to and fro like something has been broken. Loki smiles with blunt teeth and produces paperwork and background props in their computers and information systems with words beyond their ears and thoughts. It is only when he finally is brought to Thor, contained in a glass and steel room under too white light, that he wavers, his fingers curling and uncurling against his sides.

"Loki," Thor says, and his voice is hopeful and hoarse and broken, "why have you come?"

Slowly, Loki bends his knees, creases the leather of his shoes. He trails his fingers over Thor's face, rubs at dirt and dryness that's collected on his cheeks. Thor gazes at him, enraptured and so very lost.

"Tell me."

Loki does not respond right away, traces Thor's face slowly as if reading it, learning it. Thor remains still, although his eyes are slightly narrowed, puzzled. Loki has never been the sort of person given to moments of fancy or sentimentality. Loki has never had such luxuries. It is obvious that he is stalling for time.

When he finally speaks, his voice is sad and almost weary. "You grow older, Thor."

There is only silence that follows that. Loki continues tracing his fingers overs Thor's face, over his neck, around the back of his head. Thor's face shifts: a grimace, a clenching, and, finally, a sigh, long and heavy and deflated.

"As I am, yes."

Loki shifts to his knees, kneeling up to press his lips against Thor's forehead, to use the hands around the back of his neck to bring him forward. It is not an embrace, rather a shielding, and it allows Thor to hide his shame in Loki's body.

"Father sleeps," Loki murmurs, and he cards his fingers through Thor's dirty golden hair. "No one knows when he may awake."

Thor laughs, a low, choking mockery. "You should not be here, Loki."

Loki smiles, lips stretching wide. For once, he has no idea what his teeth look like.

"No," he admits, grieving already, crushed and relieved at the same time. "I should not."

 

He plaits his hair in the Jotunn fashion, for the few of their race that had sorcery and hair always wore it plaited. For the Asgardians, he threads strings of tiny gold balls and sparkling emeralds into his hair as he works alone in the great, golden bedroom meant for the myth of wedded bliss and Thor. Outside the curtains, light has begun to creep up the great palace walls, and Loki watches it seep in, watches how it makes shadows in the corners and the walls.

The halls he learned in his childhood, short that it was, loom over and yet cocoon him. He wears no armor as it was never his station, and he carries only the staff that Odin passed into his hands. His boots are thin and made for fast movement, and his nails are freshly cleaned and painted. 

If only, he lets himself think as he sets himself upon the golden throne and rests his left forearm across his belly, he had had a little more time. But time was never his to have, just as the Aesir and the Jotunn were never his to command. These are only things he has allowed himself to dream of in fevers or cups, the latter with Thor always at his side. Thor is banished, exiled, disgraced, and, although that was not Loki's intention, it had made itself part of his design.

(Lies, disgrace, destruction: this is the way Loki was born.)

And so, Loki thinks, dressed in jewels and gold and finery, wearing his Aesir skin and Jotunn teeth, this is how the world ends.

 

Laufey has grown older since last Loki saw him, an age and a half ago.

"You have grown," Laufey says, down below the steps that create the great dais of the golden throne.

"Not overly much," Loki demurs, and he stands to walk down to his father's level. "Come, Father. Walk with me in the gardens."

Loki does not know if Laufey likes Asgard's gardens; he does know, at least, that Laufey finds them interesting. He watches the way his father looks over the delicate leaves, the spindly branches of bushes, the lush green of the ground cover. When servants appear around the edges of the paths, Loki waves them away, observes the brief skittering of eyes and too quick padding of their feet. Laufey remains absorbed in the sunbathed earth.

"When I was young," Loki says, over dinner of fine meats and sweet pears, "you gave me a wolf pelt."

"Of Niflheim," Laufey answers, licking the juice of pears off his fingers. "It kept you warm."

Later that night, in his quarters and Laufey long shown to those fitting of a visiting head of state, Loki's fingers curl around the old, braided belt that holds his mail shirt close beneath his jerkin and armor. The belt's skin is nearly bare of the hair that once coated it, what it bound originally long frayed and kept packed away in a small, tan chest only out of sentiment. For a fleeting moment, Loki allows himself to feel the sadness and regret, the loss of his childhood, a yearning for something he never had, but the moment passes quickly, and he puts the belt away. 

For Laufey will not come to breakfast in the morning. Instead, it will be Týr who comes, dressed in war armor and bronze in the low sun. He will bow, hand over breast, and await, with the kind of patience war always lies cloaked in, his orders.

This Loki has always known.


End file.
